A second chance was all she wanted - Chapter 2: A night without moonlight.
I wasn't originally going to continue this fanfic, but after all the encouragement and positive reviews I've been receiving, I feel like I definitely owe it to you all. (: I just hope it doesn't disappoint.
Wonder what Shirou was doing before he found Caster? Well you're about to find out.
'...She hears the sound of rain.
It was a night without moonlight.
The surroundings were pitch black, and she wandered with an empty mind.
That is where she met him.
With bloodstained body and frozen limbs.
A chanced meeting that was more miraculous than any miracle.'
He was the first person everyone would go to if they needed something fixing, and there was always something that needed fixing on the Homurahara school grounds. A broken down heater, a faulty projector, or one of the computers in the I.T. department. He never complained though. For a magus such as Emiya Shirou, they were the perfect practice for the only magecraft he could perform. It had been perhaps twenty or thirty minutes since he was approached by one of the cleaners whilst leaving school late, and having heard that he was fairly handy with 'that sort of thing', she asked him to take a look at the recently broken vacuum cleaner, and as usual, Shirou agreed without hesitation. After he'd made certain he was alone, he laid out the various tools he'd borrowed from the janitor's closet, and painfully created the magic circuit he would need.
The agony of a hot iron rod jammed into his spine. That was the sensation he likened it to, and had grown used to. Structural grasp magecraft was his ability. Analysing an object's composition as if it were a blueprint, and increasing it's effectiveness or durability. Even with his structural analysis, it still took him the better part of fifteen minutes to repair it effectively, drenched in sweat and still enduring the searing hot pain spiking through his body. Such was the price of magecraft: 'Every time you use it, you risk losing your life'. That was what his father, Emiya Kiritsugu taught him. He understood the lesson well, but was unafraid of death. To be a magus was to have death as a constant companion.
The darkening sky informed him that he had finished up later than was intended. After casting a glance at the clock upon the wall, he breathed a small sigh. Fujimura Taiga, his energetic teacher and guardian would likely be fuming at him were he to return now, Not to mention he would have to deal with that sulky face Matou Sakura wore whenever he was late for her cooking, or was worried. Dealing with both could wait until tomorrow.
"Well... It can't be helped..." Shirou muttered aloud to himself. There was still other things that came to mind which would normally need costly repairs, and leaving now would feel as if he'd only done half a job.
He endured that searing iron rod forced into his spine a second time, and then a third time, until any further work was impossible for his weary body and mind. After another successful operation on Class 3-E's Heater, the redhead slipped the tools and the flashlight he'd borrowed back into the janitor's closet and leant his heavy body against it, trying to will some strength back into leaden limbs and kill off the pounding in his head. When he peered out of the window, a cold rainy night had already blanketed the building, smothering almost all light beneath. While he'd been working, what had begun as a light drizzle had soon become a complete downpour accompanied a heavy wind laying siege to the glass panels noisily.
Tap-tap-tap-tap. It was so damn noisy. Where on earth would he find an umbrella in the school at this hour?
Tap-tap-tap-tap. He'd catch his death, let alone a cold out there.
Tap-tap-tap-tap. That noise... it was growing louder, closer, and it echoed. And then Shirou's head finally cleared.
That definitely wasn't rain.
"Who's there?" Shirou demanded into the creeping darkness of the second floor corridor and the encroaching footsteps echoing off the tiled floor.
Maybe it was just a worker who had decided to stay in the relative shelter of the school for now, maybe it was a burglar, but the feeling of foreboding building in the pit of his stomach would not accept otherwise.
He gritted his teeth. Narrowed his eyes. Balled his hands into fists.
"Emiya Shirou... isn't it?" The darkness brought forth a low mocking voice before the man that it belonged to. He couldn't even see who the speaker was, but all it took was those few words to make his skin crawl.
"Who's asking?" Shirou spoke back plainly, glaring defiantly into the dark until a tall figure stepped into view, his features for the most part still obscured by the lack of light. Shirou could just about make out the slight chink of jewellery along with his footsteps, and a long coat of sorts on his body. He cursed himself for not keeping the flashlight that few minutes longer.
"How rude. Especially after I've endured the weather waiting for you, only to have to find you here." The man mockingly scolded Shirou as his face finally caught what little light the streetlights outside afforded him. Neck-length hair, a gaunt, weathered face, and hollow eyes were made visible to the student.
Shirou stiffened for a moment. He didn't know this man. "Don't screw with me! Who are you? What do you want from me?" He didn't know this man, but every fibre of his being already hated him.
"You only need know two things... Emiya Shirou." The man smiled a truly venomous smile, continuing his pacing toward the boy at the end of the barely lit corridor, his long coat making him seem almost like a ghost in the night. A ghost with heavy set footsteps. "First, I am... an old 'friend' of your father's." The man grimaced for a split-second, hesitating to use the word as if it were a deadly poison. "And secondly, I've been looking for something that used to belong to him. And there is one last place for me to look." If the unfamiliar man's cold coal eyes could bore holes into Shirou's body, they surely would have.
A few more steps were all that it would take for him to within arm's reach of Shirou. He had no idea what he meant by that but it still chilled his bones. Clearly, the man wasn't looking for a chat and the teen was already backed into a corner when he had used the janitor's closet door as support. Shirou's eyes scanned his surroundings, left to right, and then the build of the approaching man. There would be no running, but the man in the coat seemed to be unarmed. He was older. Stockier. Taller. His assessment advised him that there was a chance he could move faster than the man in the long coat, lunge at him, and catch him off-guard. It was a risk, but it was all he had.
His legs ached, his arms ached, his head ached, and his back was ready to give, but he waited the man to draw that little bit closer before he made his move liked a coiled viper, striking out with a thrust of his right fist as he threw his body forward in an attempt to press the element of surprise and bowl the man over.
He miscalculated. All the speed his weary body could muster was simply not enough. No, that wasn't quite right. It wasn't just not enough, even if Shirou wasn't dragging his body like some sort of puppet, he would never have been fast enough. His fist was lightly brushed aside as if it was nothing.
"Wha-" Shirou began to cry out in shock, and then was swiftly cut off, as if the wind had been sucked from his sails. Pain exploded into his abdomen. If the man in the coat's fist was a sledgehammer, then Shirou's body was a crumbling old wall caving in on itself. He felt himself sail backwards with the force of the man's blow and crash into the janitor's closet, crumpling into a pathetic pile as his vision flared red. He gasped for air and it would still not fill his lungs.
"Oh...?" The man's voice barely registered over the sound of Shirou's heartbeat pulsing agonisingly in his head as he spoke with an obvious disinterest. "As Kiritsugu's son, I expected more from you. I suppose I should not have got my hopes up." He continued with a cold dull voice, as he bent down and grabbed the wretched form of the wheezing boy at his feet by his collar, and lifted him near effortlessly back against the closet door.
"Now then... Let us see if you truly are Kiritsugu's last hiding place." The red in his vision began to fade to a blur, even while he was still struggling to fill his raw lungs, even while pain still overwhelmed his senses. The teen tried to focus his vision, with limited success, and ended up looking at that sickening stomach-turning smile upon the man's face. That smile pissed him right off. He was already enduring waves of Nausea from the blow to his body, but that smile made him want to throw up. In a small pointless action of defiance, he tried to focus the blurry vision of his eyes elsewhere other than the man's sallow face.
That was when he noticed the glint of metal around the man's neck for the first time. A small golden cross hung at his chest as a lifeless corpse at the gallows. This man... was a priest? For a fleeting moment, he tried to gather his thoughts, but a sudden movement from the man in the coat promptly cut off any further thought. He felt something foreign thrust its way into his chest and claw at his insides.
Shirou's eyes bulged as he gawped down at where he'd been stabbed. He didn't know what to expect, but it certainly wasn't the priest's arm protruding from his chest. He had plunged his hand into his body and gripped his fingers around something alien inside him tightly. He gagged, gasped, and cried out in pitiful agony. The hand tore at the very core of his being, tugging, and yanking. It was torture, and Shirou's captor seemed to take his time relishing every painstaking moment he took.
It hurt. It hurt. Oh god it hurt. It felt like an ungodly torture that even humbled the fires of hell. His heart, or his soul, or perhaps even both seemed to be being ripped from within him and out the front of his body. He desperately fought for each breath to come, he desperately fought to keep his consciousness from fading, but it was to no avail. As his vision began to fade out and his senses crawled to a close, a brilliant gold light had emerged from the core of his body with a final yank from the priest.
It was the sound of the rain eased the breath of life back into him, and drew him from a state not dissimilar from that of a deep dreamless slumber. If he could hear the heavy unrelenting torrent of rain outside, he was definitely not dead yet, even if it was just as black when he eased an eye open as it was with the one that was still closed. When the thick haze of his mind cleared somewhat, he recalled that astonishing bright light emanating from his chest as his attacker pulled his hand free, and that priest's nauseating smile. He held his breath for a fleeting moment as he clutched his chest where a large cavity should be gaping, only to breathe a sigh of relief when he found the only gaping hole there was that of his shirt, damp with blood and sweat. So he -had- been stabbed, and yet there was no wound where one should have been.
"...What the heck was that about...?" The teen grumbled groggily, finding his feet in the darkness as his attacker's voice haunted his mind. Just what did he mean by his father's last hiding place? What was it that the priest was after? He was left in the dark with only questions and a hole in his shirt with no idea how long he'd been out cold for. That was when something else the priest had said dawned on him. He had been waiting for him. Had he been waiting at the Emiya residence? Had he come into contact with Sakura and Fuji-nee? As soon as the thought entered his mind, he flung himself toward the stairs and the building's exit in a lopsided run holding his chest. Braving the harsh coalition of wind and rain that battered at his already beaten body was nothing when there were the lives of his makeshift family at stake.
He hadn't gotten far until the ground slipped out from beneath his stumbling feet.
Looking back now, it had to be fate that his foot caught the curb and tripped him flat upon his face in that pouring cold rain. Had he not clumsily mis-stepped, and had to drag his shambling body up from the pavement, he would simply have kept going towards the shopping district and eventually his home.
He never would have noticed what he appeared to be the small blot of a decrepit figure in the distance tumble out from the woods around Ryuudou temple. Having crawled back to the barrier it had bungled over, it finally lay still and placid at the roadside. The redheaded boy felt strength return to his heavy limbs, and threw himself into another lumbering run toward the crumpled figure, splashing without grace through the wind and rain.
"Hey...! Hey! Are you alright?" Shirou yelled at the top of his battered lungs.
He never could ignore someone in need.